The Times’ campaign to have professional football stopped.

Below are the Arsenal (and for historical context, occasionally one or two non-Arsenal) anniversaries for today taken from the files of over 6000 Arsenal anniversaries which appear on the Arsenal History Society website. An index to all the monthly Anniversary files can be found in the right column of this site under “Pages” on the right of the screen.

We are now working on adding to the articles information that has come to light since writing the articles, and preparing a more concise edition for publication as a book.

Here are the anniversaries, our headline comes from 1914.

28 November 1874: John Caldwell, who became Arsenal’s left back, was born in Ayr. His clubs are recorded as New Mills, Hibernian, Woolwich Arsenal, Third Lanark, Woolwich Arsenal, Brighton United, Galston, Brighton and Hove Albion.

28 November 1895: Sidney Hoar born in Bedfordshire. He was signed by Leslie Knighton for Arsenal even though Knighton claimed in his autobiography that he was forbidden from signing players at the time and had no funds so to do.

28 November 1914: Before the home game with Bristol City Henry Norris was interviewed by the Times on the subject of recruiting volunteers at football matches. Subsequent reports of the game said that of the 7000 present 2000 of these were in uniform and the rest too old, or too young to serve – a typical put down by the paper which wanted the abandonment of football but supported the continuation of horse racing.

28 November 1921: The London FA Challenge Cup final was postponed due to fog – the second Arsenal game of the week to be affected by the persistent fog. The LFA CC final was in fact left until 8 May

28 November 1923: The Times published a copy of a letter by Sir Henry Norris disagreeing with government policy that tariffs on imports would help reduce the UK’s high levels of unemployment. Norris was taking an essentially Liberal Party position on the question despite having been a Conservative councillor and MP.

28 November 1925: Arsenal 2 Sunderland 0. Arsenal 5th consecutive win – a sequence which included 10 goals in those five games for Jimmy Brain who scored 34 goals in 41 games in total in the season. The sequence also included five goals from Charlie Buchan.

28 November 1927: Alf Baker’s only international appearance. England lost 1-2 to Wales at Burnley. England ended the home championship bottom of the table with no points, while Wales came top, winning two and drawing the third game.

28 November 1931: Arsenal 6 Liverpool 0 – Division 1. Jack 2, Lambert 3, Hulme 1. It was the start of a four match unbeaten run in which Arsenal scored 14 goals.

28 November 1934: A rare outing for Norman Sidey in Arsenal 4 Manchester City 0 played at Highbury in front of 10,888. Arsenal won the Charity Shield for the second year running

28 November 1951: Arthur Milton’s only international appearance at football. He played six test matches for England at cricket. Only 12 men played for England at both cricket and football (excluding wartime games). Three of them Andy Ducat, Wally Hardinge, Arthur Milton, were Arsenal men.

28 November 1956: John Barnwell became a professional with Arsenal. After playing as an amateur for Bishop Auckland he moved to Arsenal in 1955 turned pro in 1956 and started playing for the first team in the match against Sunderland on 13 April 1957.

28 November 1962: Arsenal 12 Ford United 0 in FA Youth Cup. Ford United were an early incarnation of the club now known as Redbridge FC. Ford played in the Aetolian League which they won twice, but by 1995 the club was in serious financial difficulty, until Sky Sports was signed up as a sponsor thus rescuing the club.

28 November 1964: Last game for John Snedden. He joined Charlton Athletic for £150,000 in March 1965 and towards the end of his career went to South Africa.

28 November 1970: Arsenal 2 Liverpool 0. League match 19 of the first Double season. Graham and Radford scored.

28 November 1990: Arsenal 2 Man U 6 in the League Cup. It was an extraordinary game; Arsenal were unbeaten in the league, second in the table and 12 points ahead of Man U in 7th. Man U had only won two of their last six in the league, but as Man U took the lead, Arsenal seemed to say, “we’ll give you that; we’ll have the league”.

28 November 1999: Henry scored two goals in one game for the first time in a match that ended Arsenal 2 Derby 1. It meant Arsenal had won all three of their November league games and were unbeaten in six.

28 November 2012: The month ended with 1-1 draw to Everton making it 3 draws 1 win and 1 defeat in the month.